This article contains spoilers for Barbie and Oppenheimer.
2022 marked the first time in eight years (barring the bizarro year that was 2020) that the top film at the worldwide box office wasn’t Marvel or Star Wars. With Barbie closing in on a billion, it's set to join The Super Mario Bros. Movie at the top of the heap, which means 2023 will almost certainly repeat the trend.
That’s good news for those of us who hate monopolies. Disney was competing against itself in the 2010s, as multiple Avengers movies, Star Wars flicks, live-action remakes, and Frozens rocketed into the pantheon of the top 20 highest grossing movies of all time. Disney’s weakening grip is also good news for those of us who don’t only want to watch movies for children. Among all the other things the triumph of Barbenheimer represents, it's a victory against the prudishness that Disney worked so hard to instill in its audience.
Over the past 15 years, mainstream movies have grown increasingly sexless, and that’s largely due to Disney — a famously squeaky clean company — owning all the biggest blockbuster franchises. The result has been a sterilization of American film. The Avengers don’t have sex, and MCU movies rarely even contain family friendly displays of affection like kissing. Under Disney’s stewardship, Star Wars also mostly forgot the romances that played big roles in both of George Lucas' trilogies.
Seeing Barbie, I was reminded of the PG-13 movies I grew up with as a kid. The PG-13 blockbusters of the '90s and '00s might have been okay for kids to see, but not to the exclusion of adults. I saw Men in Black for the first time when I was ten and there's a decent amount of swearing, sex jokes, and general adult-oriented content. That didn't mean I couldn't enjoy it — there were funny aliens and a final slimy fight against a huge bug — but MIB invited kids along for a ride they were a little too short for instead of forcing adults to ride the coaster with their knees against their chest. Similarly, Barbie's hilarious final line has already left tons of children asking their parents what a gynecologist is. That may be an annoying thing to deal with if you aren’t ready to have that talk with your eight-year-old, but it's a healthy sign for a film industry that has spent the last decade infantilizing adult viewers.
Oppenheimer's R-rating ensures that adults won't bring their kids to it by accident, but that doesn't mean its sex and nudity won't make its audience uncomfortable. The '90s saw a slew of horny wide releases like Basic Instinct, Showgirls, Indecent Proposal, and Eyes Wide Shut, but they've gone all but extinct since the 2010s as mid-budget movies squarely aimed at adults died off and big-budget spectacles aimed at the widest audience possible fully overtook multiplexes. Challenging work for mature audiences largely moved to cable and streaming as TV tackled the kind of content that had, until then, had a home in theaters. For many audiences who don't seek out arthouse releases or repertory screenings, the sex scenes in Oppenheimer may be the first they've seen on a big screen in over a decade.
So, why does any of this matter? For one, an attitude that scenes which don't "advance the plot" have no place in movies has become fairly widespread, and it’s a judgment that is almost exclusively leveled against sex scenes. It's a pernicious, anti-art attitude, and the more sex scenes in mainstream movies, the sooner we can hopefully do away with it. Do Oppenheimer's sex scenes advance the plot? Not as such. For plot purposes, Oppenheimer's early encounter with Jean Tatlock could have occurred fully clothed, with a single kiss to communicate the nature of their relationship. And, for plot purposes, Kitty's vision of Jean nude in the deposition room could have been cut entirely.
But those scenes inform our understanding of the characters. We understand something about the way Oppenheimer sees sex and death through writer/director Christopher Nolan's decision to have him repeat the line he first read during sex after witnessing the first detonation of the nuclear bomb. We understand better how Kitty views her husband through Nolan's decision to have her witness the imagined sex scene during Oppenheimer's deposition. These scenes may not "advance the plot" but they deepen our understanding of the characters caught up in it.
And second, not all movies should be made for children. A healthy society should be engaging with art that is aimed a little higher, that works to deal with themes that children aren't yet ready to grasp. Barbie is PG-13 for "suggestive references and brief language," but it also deals with what it means to be a woman, a man, a mother, and a person in general. That may be too much for children to understand, but it isn't bad for them to attempt to. It's healthy for kids to be introduced to art that is a little too deep or complex or scary for them. That's one way they grow.
After 15 years of superhero movies dominating the box office, it seems like we have the opportunity to emerge into a healthier cultural space. I like good cape flicks as much as anyone, but there has to be room for more. It's healthy for the industry, but it's healthy for the minds of moviegoers, too.